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9/27/08

Naomi Klein On The Bailout

But I think that it’s important to stress that this is money that could be used for actively preventing foreclosures. They could be using this money - a fraction of it - to keep people in their homes. They could be stimulating and rebuilding the fundamentals of the economy by investing in infrastructure, public works projects, a green-style New Deal - all of the investments that are so desperately needed. New technology, investing in the real economy and getting away from this casino economy. And because they want to throw all this money at Wall Street, that is money that will not be available for those real investments.

I think she is making an important point; if we bailout the status quo, it remains, then grows, again. We should think hard about how we decide to save our economy. It may be much smarter to consider the hundreds of billions of dollars we need to borrow as an investment, rather than a bailout.